Beautiful Lie the Dead by Barbara Fradkin Page B
Authors: Barbara Fradkin
Tags: book, FIC 022000
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for his stonewalling? Green hoped it was the former, but his instincts prickled.
He had a search to conduct, yet he felt as if there were a door behind which he was not allowed to look.
* * *
The pathetic winter sun had barely crawled over the windowsill into her third floor apartment when Detective Sue Peters sat down at her computer. She had already showered, dressed and brewed herself a full pot of kick-ass coffee. She wanted to get a head start before Gibbsie the computer whiz showed up. He was a sweetheart, but she really didnât need him holding her hand all day, and if she blundered around in cyberspace for hours instead of skipping nimbly to the websites she needed, who the hell cared? It wasnât like the inspector was holding his breath for information. She hadnât even told him the whole story in case it turned out to be a dumb idea.
Her computer was an aging clunker that hated all the fancy new graphics and regularly crashed when she asked too much of it. The trick was to be patient, not ask it to do two things at once, let it go at its own speed, and it would get the job done. She could relate to that. She and her computer were best buds, and she resisted all Gibbsieâs threats to throw it in the dump. Even the idea felt like a personal affront.
She already had a plan. Sheâd been awake half the night, too excited to sleep, and as she lay in the dark knowing that at least her body had to rest, sheâd let her mind run loose. It still tripped up, forgot where it had been and where it was going, forgot why too sometimes. But much less now than a year ago or even a month ago. That in itself was as exciting as any case she might work on. Harvey Longstreet was going to get the full brunt of what her healing mind could do.
After coaxing her computer to load Google, she typed in his name and hit âsearchâ. That yielded a huge bunch of garbage about a circus performer in Australia. What a dumb name for a circus performerâwhatever happened to Flying Ace? She added Montreal to the search. The circus had been to Montreal, but in between the mush, she found a single link to a lawyer at McGill.
It was a posting about a student who had won the Longstreet Prize for Criminal Law. A single footnote indicated that the prize had been established in memory of Harvey Longstreet, a popular professor of Criminal Law who had died in 1978. Sue tried a few other search terms to dig up more information but to no avail. Nineteen seventy-eight was just too long ago to have much presence on the web. After surfing pointlessly for an hour, rebooting four times and drinking all three cups of coffee, even she was ready to toss the old pile of crap into the garbage. Time for Plan B. At least she had a date of death to work from.
She had recently had her driverâs licence reinstated, so she headed down to the parking lot, where she stood looking in dismay at the mound of snow in her spot. Somewhere under there was her Toyota Echo. The roads were still an unpredictable mess of ice and slush. The sun was trying hard but at these temperatures, nothing was going to melt in a hurry. No point in wearing herself out shovelling before she was halfway through her day, so she left her car for Gibbsie to dig out and called a cab.
The Ottawa Public Library was only a short hop from her Centretown apartment and the cabbie wasnât pleased, but that was his problem. The library was in a contest with the police station for the ugliest building in the city. Sheâd heard the architectural style of both was called Brutalism, as if that was something to be proud of. Brutal it surely was, an ugly chunk of rough brown concrete squatting on the corner like a toad at a garden party. Inside, she made her way straight upstairs to the newspapers and periodicals section and approached a bored-looking library assistant picking his teeth and staring into space behind his computer.
Judging by how long the CSI s and Law and
He had a search to conduct, yet he felt as if there were a door behind which he was not allowed to look.
* * *
The pathetic winter sun had barely crawled over the windowsill into her third floor apartment when Detective Sue Peters sat down at her computer. She had already showered, dressed and brewed herself a full pot of kick-ass coffee. She wanted to get a head start before Gibbsie the computer whiz showed up. He was a sweetheart, but she really didnât need him holding her hand all day, and if she blundered around in cyberspace for hours instead of skipping nimbly to the websites she needed, who the hell cared? It wasnât like the inspector was holding his breath for information. She hadnât even told him the whole story in case it turned out to be a dumb idea.
Her computer was an aging clunker that hated all the fancy new graphics and regularly crashed when she asked too much of it. The trick was to be patient, not ask it to do two things at once, let it go at its own speed, and it would get the job done. She could relate to that. She and her computer were best buds, and she resisted all Gibbsieâs threats to throw it in the dump. Even the idea felt like a personal affront.
She already had a plan. Sheâd been awake half the night, too excited to sleep, and as she lay in the dark knowing that at least her body had to rest, sheâd let her mind run loose. It still tripped up, forgot where it had been and where it was going, forgot why too sometimes. But much less now than a year ago or even a month ago. That in itself was as exciting as any case she might work on. Harvey Longstreet was going to get the full brunt of what her healing mind could do.
After coaxing her computer to load Google, she typed in his name and hit âsearchâ. That yielded a huge bunch of garbage about a circus performer in Australia. What a dumb name for a circus performerâwhatever happened to Flying Ace? She added Montreal to the search. The circus had been to Montreal, but in between the mush, she found a single link to a lawyer at McGill.
It was a posting about a student who had won the Longstreet Prize for Criminal Law. A single footnote indicated that the prize had been established in memory of Harvey Longstreet, a popular professor of Criminal Law who had died in 1978. Sue tried a few other search terms to dig up more information but to no avail. Nineteen seventy-eight was just too long ago to have much presence on the web. After surfing pointlessly for an hour, rebooting four times and drinking all three cups of coffee, even she was ready to toss the old pile of crap into the garbage. Time for Plan B. At least she had a date of death to work from.
She had recently had her driverâs licence reinstated, so she headed down to the parking lot, where she stood looking in dismay at the mound of snow in her spot. Somewhere under there was her Toyota Echo. The roads were still an unpredictable mess of ice and slush. The sun was trying hard but at these temperatures, nothing was going to melt in a hurry. No point in wearing herself out shovelling before she was halfway through her day, so she left her car for Gibbsie to dig out and called a cab.
The Ottawa Public Library was only a short hop from her Centretown apartment and the cabbie wasnât pleased, but that was his problem. The library was in a contest with the police station for the ugliest building in the city. Sheâd heard the architectural style of both was called Brutalism, as if that was something to be proud of. Brutal it surely was, an ugly chunk of rough brown concrete squatting on the corner like a toad at a garden party. Inside, she made her way straight upstairs to the newspapers and periodicals section and approached a bored-looking library assistant picking his teeth and staring into space behind his computer.
Judging by how long the CSI s and Law and
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